Exhaustion
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: One shot. Mort is visited by a few old friends that he thought he'd seen the last of long ago. Confusion ensues. Probably a bit disturbing.


It was probably a mistake, but one I can't afford to do anything about now. Short of being God and a lot more forgiving than I actually am, there is no way I can bring them back. Don't ask me which is more likely to happen first; should God abdicate, which isn't likely in the least, I'm not exactly next in line to take over, but forgiveness, mercy, has never been my strong point.

Its never been one of my points at all.

I have several points.

That's not one of them.

I can sit here for hours thinking about nothing in particular; run a hand through my hair and squint at the far wall as though there's something there that I need to make all efforts possible in order to see. Could it be important? Could it tell me what to do? Could it guide me out of the hole I dug for myself with that bloody shovel?

No. Its just one of those flaws that show up in wallpaper every now and then. I don't like that. I've got to get it re-papered _again_, and this is just a pain in the butt, you know? How many flaws can there possibly be in some fricken wallpaper? Its not like I've bought the same wallpaper every time, either, because I certainly like to think of myself as learning from my mistakes. I bought different patterns, different styles, different manufacturers, different stores. Everything I could change, I changed. And still, there's these flaws.

There's no dog around for me to talk to, so I talk to the wall.

"Out!" I order it, pointing my finger at it like some drill sergeant who wishes he could gun down the new recruits using just his hands and sheer willpower. "Out, damned spot!"

The flaw, predictably, doesn't move a muscle.

I get up and go over to it. The thought strikes me that I'm possibly paying this thing so much attention just because I'm glad its drawn my mind from the two issues that plague me (they're the same issues, really, just two heads of the Hydra, twins conjoined at their ugly skulls, hissing and writhing somewhere far beneath the earth). But I shove that aside. Its not important anymore.

I tell you, when enough time has gone by for two entire crops of corn to grow, be harvested, be eaten with relish (and butter) and die, then... enough time has gone by. There's got to be a point where we just move on.

We move on—

To wallpaper.

Well, so its not a big step. But it's a step nonetheless, and I can't deny where my imaginative mind takes me. Its been a little hard, recently, to get any good writing done, but I expect that to pass. Things are always harder in the spring. There's so much good weather, its downright depressing. I like the wind to be tossing the trees in a tumult, I like the snow to be spread thick on the ground and passing animals to make their mark in it, spreading yellow stains that prove why you should never, _never_ eat anything but white snow. White, pure white, white. When I was a kid once I— look, I just said I learned from my mistakes, okay? So spring is hard.

This flaw is harder.

I hate that; anytime I get a visitor, which doesn't happen often, I pull them over to the wall (they flinch at the contact) and I demand that they examine it.

"See that flaw? Large as life. Isn't that ridiculous? Isn't that just _stupid_?"

They can't see it for the first few minutes or so. I have to push them, hold their heads down to the correct level, breathe in their ear—

"_See it?"_

Invariably, they can find the flaw after a while. I appreciate that they don't lie to me immediately just to get out of reach. I do wonder why I can see these flaws, big as nobody's business, when the rest of the world is so blind.

_Lord, I got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals._

Again the thought rushes up at me like an eager puppy; I'll catch and hold anything I possibly can to keep my mind off the faces that come to me when I close my eyes. Maybe that's why I haven't been sleeping much lately; maybe its not just all the caffeine.

Someone, I don't know who, tells me in town a day or so ago that I've got one terrific case of bed-head.

A deadpan stare at them and they start to twitch.

"The last time I went to bed, I had a woman with me," I said. "I woke her in the middle of the night with my mouth on her throat, and she made her first mistake by calling me Ted. She didn't make too many more of those mistakes, I can tell you that, friend— its not bed-head, you see, is what I'm saying. I sleep on a _couch_, you complete and utter _moron_."

I don't know why people think I'm so peculiar. Its not like they've had to talk me down from a twenty story building or anything. I run a hand through my hair; yes, its getting a little unkempt. But so what? Not like anyone's going to see it.

Just like no one sees this flaw.

I step back and regard it seriously, peering over the rims of my glasses. I forgot, and slept with them on. The frame's a little crumpled now. Can't be helped. Except, maybe, with a hammer, but I'd have to go search for one in the cluttered garden shed and searching for things in the cluttered garden shed isn't fun. I live on my own, no responsibilities. I don't have to do anything that isn't fun.

Attacking the wall and that flaw is looking very fun, at the moment.

Maybe I should go search out the hammer after all—?

Nah. The hoe works just as well, and I keep it handy by my door, next to the shovel.

A heft over my head, eyes closed as I breathe a jumbled, pointless, unintelligible prayer to someone, I know not who, for no particular reason, except maybe asking forgiveness for ruining such fine sheetrock as I see before me. After all, someone built this house once. I guess. Slaved over it, maybe, and here I am about to destroy a part of their handiwork. Just as well they weren't around to see it, because nothing could stop me now.

A downswing.

A sharp _thock_ almost like a bat connecting with a ball, and completely unlike the sound of a shovel connecting with a human head, except I didn't just think that. The hoe sinks a little ways into the sheet-rock, and I can't help but blink at it for a moment in confusion.

There's the flaw. Large as life. Larger.

Another upswing, downswing, another moment blinking in puzzlement; things quickly take on a certain rhythm, pattern, cycle and I start to hum._ "I been workin' on the railroad, all the live long day—" _A song which always somewhat irked me because of its utter lack of grammatical pretense, but that, like many other things, cannot be helped. That was what was in my head; that was what escaped my lips. I kept on, and kept on, and kept on. Upswing, downswing, a dull ache in my arms spreading up through my shoulders and down to the center of my back. A few more lifts, a few more hits, so much of the wall is torn away that the flaw is now a gaping hole, through which tumble the bodies, both of them.

Except I know they can't be there, because I buried them in the garden.

Nevertheless, they're lying in a grotesque tumble of arms and legs, covered in sheetrock dust and even more the worse for wear because I'd been entirely overly-enthusiastic with the hoe. Can't be helped. I just stare at them for a minute.

There's only one question in my mind, and that is, "So— why _does_ the corn taste so oddly, then?"

Four bodies, maybe? Can I possibly be responsible for all those deaths? And since when did Ted and Amy have identical twins? I can see this turning into some sort of 30s screwball mixup comedy movie, except Katharine Hepburn isn't here to help me out. I feel her absence cruelly. Something should really be done about this, and I wonder for a moment if the strange sort of fog that exists in my mind can manage to conjure me up an assistant.

I turn from the bodies and blink expectantly at the door.

She waltzes in, every inch the completely made-up person from my sick and twisted mind. I've named her Trippy. I hope I won't regret it.

A glance at the mess on the floor and the mess standing by the mess on the floor and one delicately plucked eyebrow raises. "Dude. You have, like, some serious issues."

"God," I groan, "I didn't mean to give you that sort of conversation—"

"Seriously, dude. There's a huge flaw in your wallpaper."

At last someone can see it! Finally! "You have no idea how long I've waited to hear someone say that," I inform her. "Thank you, very much, Trippy— its been a long haul staring at that flaw all by myself."

She pulls something out from behind her back. "This your shovel?"

"Yes," I answer her, "thanks, do me a favor? Run out back and dig me another hole."

"Another one? Dude, what do you need two holes for?"

I gesture to the bodies on the floor and immediately she looks embarrassed.

"Dude, sorry, didn't realize you had company."

"Oh, no, its just—" Ted and Amy have, against all expectation, stood up, Ted helping her to stand like the good man he is— was— and both of them shaking sheetrock dust off their clothes and out of their hair. Amy gives me a brilliant smile, somewhat dulled by the passage of time and the fact that she's been dead inside a wall.

"We were wondering when you were going to let us out. Not very nice of you to keep us in there, you know, Mort— not very nice at all."

I glance round the room, weighing, judging, measuring, muttering. "All the elements are here— Ted, Amy, me, shovel, outside garden, place to plant various crops—"

"Next time," suggests Trippy, "how about we do some nice beefsteak tomatoes?"

I look at her thoughtfully. "You know— that's an idea, actually. I mean, there would certainly be more meaning to having huge tomatoes dripping red down my chin— sorry," I added as I noticed her blanch.

"Dude, you're a murderer, not a vampire."

"Right," I answer contritely, "I'll try to keep those two straight."

A glance around again tells me that Amy and Ted have gone out the window; an anguished search reveals that they're coolly occupied in digging up their counterparts buried beneath the corn.

"Hey!" I imagine I sound a bit irate by this time.

They glance up at me. "Its just us," says Amy, favoring me again with that smile. "No problem, Mort— no worries, all friends here, right?"

This has me dumbfounded. "You do know that I killed you both, right?"

"I'm trying to move past that, hon," she says seriously. "I'm sure you had the best of intentions."

"No I didn't!" I contradict explosively. "I didn't have the best of intentions at all! You'd done wrong by me, I did wrong by you, two wrongs don't make a right, all they get you is back where you're started again—" The significance of what I was saying struck me just then, and I stared at them as they continued to try and dig themselves up. "You're saying we're going to go back to how we were before, that I get another chance at doing this?"

"Of course, hon," cooed Amy, that sweet sweet smile never leaving her lips. I have always envied her ability to speak without changing her expression. I wish I could do that. I feel Trippy's hand on my shoulder and glance back at her; her eyes are large and honeyed, and I know what she would feel like after a long, hard day.

Completely exhausted.

"Actually," I say slowly, dragging my glance back to my ex-ex-wife and her dead husband, "it takes three wrongs to make it back where you started, not two. Provided, of course, that going left is wrong, which I have always disagreed with. So, do me a favor, Teddy—"

Ted, never the brightest of men even when he was alive, glances up at me, all expectant. Some sheet-rock dust filters down through his once-perfect hair and lands on his eyelashes, making him blink like a very sleepy elephant. I give him all the glory of my most insincere grin. Braces flash in the sunlight. About time I got these things off, but I admit I find the tightening sessions with my dentist rather invigorating.

"Hand me that shovel?"

Its not every man who gets a chance to truly figure out whether he would, if he could, do it all over again. I admit a lot of this didn't make any sense. But its straightened out in my head, now; so many of my questions are answered.

I am bad, and I know it. I'm wicked and evil and I enjoy it and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Well— maybe for the world; I guess if someone wants me to be good that much, we'd manage some sort of compromise.

But I'll never let on what I'm really looking for.

Smooth, flush, cool against my cheek, an attractive pattern, and utterly, utterly flawless.

**A/N: The truth is, Secret Window is one of the movies that I simply cannot watch all the way through. But, y'know, I don't exactly control what I write. If you've been paying attention, you ought to know that by now.**


End file.
